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“Eda?”
The whisper of her name makes Eda stir, aware of another person’s presence in her bedroom. She sits up in her nest, staring blearily around the room… and soon finds Luz standing in her doorway, an orb of light hovering above her hand.
“Huh?” Eda murmurs, shaking her head to fight off her drowsiness. “Oh, hey, Luz. What’re you doing, kiddo?”
“Uh…” Luz sniffs, the sound catching her attention immediately. “Can I… stay with you for a bit?”
“Sure thing. You can stay all night if you need to. C’mere, kid.”
Eda shuffles to the side of her nest, making space for Luz. She pats the empty spot, watching Luz walk across her bedroom, a blanket slung around her shoulders like her new cape. When Luz gets close enough for the orb of light to illuminate her face, Eda spies the tears shimmering on Luz’s cheeks.
“I didn’t wanna be a bother…” Luz mumbles as she climbs into the nest beside her. She extinguishes the orb of light, leaving the room almost pitch black, only faintly glowing thanks to the tiny amount of moonlight creeping through the large window.
“Don’t be stupid, Luz. You’d never be a bother,” Eda says. “Now… I’m guessing you wanna do the parallel-arms-thing?”
Luz giggles wetly, rubbing her eyes on the back of her hand. She wriggles closer, wrapping her arms around Eda, head on her shoulder. Eda hugs her back, rubbing her hand against Luz’s back in a way she hopes is comforting.
“Are you okay, kid?” she asks, aware of how stupid a question that was. Luz is crying, you idiot, she thinks. Of course she’s not okay.
“I just… I keep thinking about my mom. I dunno when I’ll see her again.” And…” Luz trails off. “You almost got petrified, Eda. I… I nearly lost you. I was so scared, and…” A small sob escapes her and Luz clings tighter to her.
Eda brings her other hand to the back of Luz’s head, idly stroking her short hair as she keeps rubbing her back. “I’ll be honest with you, kid. I don’t know when you’ll see your mom again. But we won’t stop until we get a new portal, and you can go see her. And as for me… Today was… pretty darn terrifying, I won’t lie. But… I didn’t get fully petrified, and Lilith took half my curse for me, so I’m alive and I even got my normal body back. Things have been hard… but I’m okay now.” She chuckles. “You ain’t getting rid of me that easily, kiddo.”
As she clings to Eda hard enough to hurt (but Eda doesn’t push her away), Luz mumbles, “Thanks, Eda… Is it okay if I sleep here?”
“No problem,” Eda says, watching Luz lie down at her side, covering herself with the blanket brought from her room. “Just be warned… I’m kinda awkward to share a bed with.”
“She means she’s super fidgety!” Hooty says from outside the large window, making them both jump about a foot in the air.
“What the heck, Hooty?!” Eda cries, grabbing the first thing she can reach (a skeleton of a small animal that she doesn’t remember putting in her nest) and throwing it across the room.
As Hooty vanishes, mumbling sulkily to himself, Luz giggles. And as Luz begins to sound a bit more like her normal self, Eda sighs and flops onto her back in her nest, smiling when Luz wriggles closer, resting her head on Eda’s arm.
And when she awakes the next morning, exhausted and aching from yesterday’s chaotic events, Eda finds Luz still asleep in her nest. And as the human girl continues to sleep, curled into a ball at her side, Eda smiles fondly and tucks the blanket tighter around Luz’s shoulders.